Lindroth and Family Land on Feet Despite Boycott

One of the biggest fallacies surrounding the 1980 Olympic boycott is that if affected only the athletes. At least that’s what Debi Lindroth would tell you.

While her husband, Eric, prepared for what would have been his final shot at making the U.S. Olympic water polo team, she worked full time for four years at a building company to help finance that training. In addition, she played hostess to dozens of team members at their Costa Mesa home when they flew to southern California to train every other weekend. The team members had nicknamed her “mom” because they often showed up hungry at her front door.

In some ways, she felt as much a part of the team as the players. When word of the boycott came, “my heart just sank,” she said.

“It’s kind of like a woman putting her husband through law school and saying OK, you can’t take the bar,” she said.

To this day, the mention of Jimmy Carter’s name means only one thing to her: a man who played the game of politics the same way a child would play kickball. “To me it was kind of like, ‘You’re not playing the way I like you to play, so I’m going to take my ball and go home,’ ” she said.

Eric Lindroth, 38, shares that anger. An Olympian in 1972, he was one of the youngest players on the squad and received little pool time during the bronze medal-winning U.S. performance. The team failed to qualify in 1976.

The Moscow Olympic Games were to be his big chance. And the Carter administration’s effort to assuage the pain--a week of activities culminating with a medal presentation ceremony and a handshake from the President--didn’t change anything.

“I think about it all the time,” he said. “I look at my honorary medal and think, ‘That should be the real thing.’ ”

Instead of taking a spot on a platform, he went to the White House and shook Carter’s hand, something many of the athletes chose not to do.

“I don’t really think I said anything,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with what had happened, but I felt that I should go through and not be dishonorable as well.”

Like his other teammates who were interviewed, Lindroth landed on his feet. Since water polo promised few financial rewards, most weren’t counting on having public exposure of the Games secure their financial futures.

He is now a general contractor in Costa Mesa. Married in 1976, the Lindroths have three children. But it’s hard to ignore the possibility that if the team had gone to Moscow and medaled, Lindroth might have received credit for credit due.